Students organisations to hold protests in Delhi

New Delhi, June 2 (IANS) To oppose the proposed four-year graduate programme in Delhi university (DU), various students organisations have decided to hold protests in the national capital Monday.

"This four-year programme is an anti-student educational reform that will adversely affect students coming from the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Castes (OBC), the physically-challenged and minority communities in many ways," said a joint statement from Campus Front of India (CFI), Democratic Students' Union (DSU) and Students Islamic Union (SIU) here Sunday.

The protesters belonging to CFI, DSU and SIU will burn the effigies of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Human Resource Development Minister M.M. Pallam Raju and DU vice chancellor Dinesh Singh at the Arts Faculty in the varsity campus.

The student members of Joint Action Front for Democratic Education, which primarily represents SC, ST and OBC students, will march to India Gate with flaming torches.

"The central government is trying to experiment with Delhi University - the biggest university in the country. This experiment is being done under the current Vice Chancellor Dinesh Singh to privatise education and make it inaccessible to the most deprived sections of the country," the statement added.

"This university will become the model to ensure that higher education becomes the stronghold of the upper caste ruling elite," it claimed.The new course system has been facing strong opposition from student outfits like All India Students Association (AISA), All India Students Federation (AISF) and Students Federation of India (SFI), along with Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA), who have demanded the resignation of the DU vice chancellor.

Noted jurist Rajinder Sachar and journalist Kuldeep Nayar have written a letter to the prime minister seeking his intervention to postpone the decision.

"We believe that such a change in the policy on higher education should first be considered and examined by the ministry of human resource development and parliament in consultation with prominent educationists of India," they said in the joint letter.